Fantasy on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners' Lending Library

I have just enrolled my fantasy novel Tarnish back on KDP Select for a limited time.  This means that right now, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited or the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, you can download Tarnish for free.  Right now.

Go ahead, check out the description and reviews on Amazon.  Notice the especially the quotes from professional reviews and reading blogs, such as Tales of the Talisman Magazine.

As a matter of fact, there's a full review in Talisman's newest issue (volume 10, issue 1), available here.  A big thank you to editor David Lee Summers and especially to Karissa Sluss, who read the book and wrote a very thorough and well-thought review.

As I've blogged about before, the downside of entering the Faustian KDP Select deal is that you can't have your ebook published anywhere else.  So for the next three to four months, the Tarnish ebook will not be available anywhere but Amazon.  

Writers of the Future Contest Results... At Least Mine

My story for the last quarter, which will also be featured in the Identity Crisis collection Dreams of Flying sometime next year, did not win the contest...  But it did receive an Honorable Mention, which is pretty darn nice!  There are thousands of entrants every quarter, so being selected for an honorable mention is still, well, an honor.

So now I'm going to revise the story and submit to to other markets.  If it gets picked up for publication that will likely delay the release of Dreams, as it's standard to wait a year for rights to revert back to the writer.  But getting published in a big magazine or fiction website is certainly worth the wait!

You can check out the talented eight finalists of this quarter who are going forward toward winning by clicking here.  Good luck, everyone, and congrats!

New Superhero on Amazon.com

My humorous superhero adventure tale Puppet Theatre is now available on Amazon for only $0.99!

You can find it by clicking right here.

In other news, this is likely the last post I'll be typing up on this side of the Pacific.  The next few weeks will be even crazier for the Brink family than the last few have been, so please understand if I don't get back to writing or blogging for a bit.  But I'll see you all on the other side of this world-spanning wormhole when I get the chance!

Weird Web Pirate Bull$#!^

I don't know if I should be flattered or offended.  I notice that at some point in the last week or so, someone else has taken over my old writer's blog URL.  "jdbrinkfugitive" is now the site for some cheap hair care curling iron crap. How weird is that???  Someone decided that "jdbrinkfugitive" had the ring they were looking for to sell curling irons?!  Maybe they figured I was soooooo damn popular that using my discarded website would guarantee then a rich flood of customers!

Hmm.  Not likely.

I don't recommend anyone buy anything there.  They surely have to be some foreign con job.  Who else would purchase that very specific URL to sell a totally unrelated product?

The scary part is that I still had log-in access to my blog, so hopefully that didn't go both ways. I have now deleted my blog at that address, for whatever good that does.

Hot Chick with a Sword

PROGRESS AND PAUSE: KICKSTARTER UPDATE

A couple weeks ago I finished the second draft on Part One of the book (basically the first third of it) and was able to get together with Amy Thunderhawk to take some pictures for future use on a cover design.  The sample here is just to give you a taste.  There is a lot of graphic design work that will go into removing her from my kitchen and placing her (along with some other elements) into a cool-but-creepy book cover.  

That's the progress part.  The pause part is this: I'm now nine days out from shipping my entire family and life to distant Japan with the Navy.  We are in a state of CHAOS right now.  I feel guilty stopping long enough to even write this.  So work on this project will likely be put on hold for a good two or three weeks.  But I still intend to have it finished by the end of the year.  

I'll let you all know when I've reached the next milestone along the way!  

FUGITIVE FICTION is Go for Launch!

The new Fugitive Fiction website has come online!  At this point, I'm pretty much the poster child for the indie publishing house, which will quickly become obvious.  But go ahead and take a look anyway…

I will lean on their site from now on to display and share links to my books published by FF, and so you'll notice links from here going there.  No sense repeating what they've already done, right?

I'll also have a progress report on my current project to blog about here in the next day or so.  Stay tuned!

HUNGRY GODS: Chapter One

I've just finished a revision of the first chapter of my forth-coming superhero novel, Hungry Gods, which you can find by clicking the link on the bar above, or by clicking here.

I'm working on the second draft now, which will then go out to be proofread and copy-edited, followed by a final revision and publishing.  We're projecting November-ish for the final product, but you can get a nice sample right now to get your weekend started.

Enjoy!  

Slaaneshi Vampires or Possessed Chaos Marines?

A lightning bolt of inspiration hit me yesterday and decided to dive right in.  The idea was primarily for making my own possessed chaos marines unit, but I've also been somewhat on a vampire kick lately, so I got some ideas for that too.

Idea #1: Use these as possessed.  Check, will do.

Idea #2: Field a Chaotic Blood Angels army, a force where for Angels have all actually become vampires.  Could be fun, if I were going to build an entirely new army and convert just about every model.  I'm sure others have already done that and I'd love to see the models.

Idea #3: Invent my own unit and rules, just for fun.  Did that too (below).

These models were made from leftover fantasy ghoul parts.  (I use the ghouls as plague bearers and Typhus zombies.)  The character model is made with Blood Angel Sanguinary Guard parts.  I will likely make 3 or 4 more.  Unlikely I'll field more than 6 or 7 possessed marines.  (They cost too many points.  How does GW justify 26 points a model for them?  Which just lends to my theory that points values are arbitrarily pulled out of someone's butt.  Which is exactly what I did below and may have even over priced my Children of Darkness unit.)

Children of Darkness (elite)

Basically, a Chaos chapter of vampires known as the Children of Darkness.  The more powerful of them, known as Coven Fathers, are masters in their own right and usually have their own wandering bands of freakish monsters.  Fathers are also greedy and selfish by nature, thus you rarely see more than one unit in any one Chaos war band. 

There are two theories as to the origins of the Children of Darkness.  Some hypothesize that they are a chaos chapter derived from the Emperor’s Children, thus the similar name and apparent link to Slaanesh via their endless thirst.  Others believe they are fallen Blood Angels whose have been consumed by their own innate thirsts and become monsters of chaos.  

A unit consists of 4 Children of Darkness marines and 1 Coven Father (character) for 170 pts.  May add up to 5 more Children of Darkness for 22 pts each. 

 

Children of Darkness Chaos Marine

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
4	4	4	4	1	5	2	8	3+

Gear: power armor, close combat weapon/claws 

Special rules:  Fleet, Fearless, Infiltrate, Acute Senses, Rending, Rage  

Shadow Walk:  They have Move Through Cover and do not suffer the normal Initiative penalty for assaulting through cover (act as if with assault grenades).

Blood Is Life:  For each unsaved wound the unit causes in combat, place a blood marker (such as a penny) next to the unit.  (Do not count kills from a sweeping advance.)  At the end of the combat phase, after all casualties have been removed, roll a D6 for each blood marker.  On a 5+ the unit regains a Wound, allocated by the owning player.  These can be to heal the Coven Father (max of 2 Wnds) and/or return Children from the dead.  Replaced models consolidate with the unit.  If all models were killed in the combat, a new unit forms as close to the combat site as possible but 2” away from enemy models. 

Coven Father

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
5	4	5	4	2	5	3	9	3+

All rules and gear for Children of Darkness apply to the Coven Father.

He is a Character and has the Champion of Chaos rule.

May buy a Chaos Boon for 10 points.

Unnatural Killer: In addition to Rending, his attacks have the Shred special rule.  

Bring on the Night:  Once per game, at the beginning of the turn, he can cause Night Fighting.

Hypnotic Gaze:  All enemy models in base contact with him reduce their Initiative by one-half.  If in a Challenge, this effects only the challenged model.

Drink of My Cup:  Models killed specifically by the Coven Father’s attacks are set to the side, if they are infantry, jump infantry, bikers, cavalry, or artillery crew.  After combat and after Blood Is Life rolls are made, roll a D6 for each of the Father's victims. On a 5+ they rise from the dead and join the unit.  These become Children of Darkness (infantry) in all respects but retain their original Armor Save. Use an appropriate model. 

Kind of powerful but... Fun!  Wish I could start my own coven right now!

The Fat Lady Sings of Victory!!!

Okay, that might sound like a 60's Cold War passphrase, but what it means is the campaign is over (hence fat lady singing) and we have not only passed, but done so at  236% of our goal!  (That's the victory part.)  

A GINORMOUS THANK YOU TO ALL WHO CONTRIBUTED!  

(Ginormous is a real word now, isn't it?  Holy poop, I just Googled it and, yes, it is…  That's kind of shameful…)

And at $1182, our first stretch goal, "Wrist Watch Communicators," has been activated.  So everyone who pitched in $5 or more will receive a Postcard Progress Report about the time I'm making the final revision.  

When might that be?  Well, I've started on the second draft now, but I'm also in the process of preparing my house to go up for rent and my family to move to (literally) the opposite side of the world.  So real life is in a major flux right now, but I'll be working on Hungry Gods even as I struggle through this chaotic period.  I'm hoping to be sending out those postcards sometime in November and getting the final book published and sent out to you before the year is out.  (But please forgive me if it ends up being a month or two later than planned.)  

And I'll be posting progress notices via Kickstarter as we go too.  Once I get a viable cover image going, I'll let you know and give you all a sneak peek.  You can also follow this blog for any other updates and news on the writing front.

THANK YOU all again for your generosity and faith in me and this project.  Very soon the young hero Spitball will be dodging zombies and raising hell for your entertainment!  And you have all helped make that possible!

We made it! But it ain't over yet!

As of today, this project is funded!!!  Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far!!!

But guess what?  It ain't over yet!  There's still three days to go and the best part is, it's all guaranteed now.  Anyone who gets in on the project at this point already knows it's a done deal, thanks to those who have come this far to push this baby over the top.  

It's all down hill from here, so let's see how many more folks we can get to hop aboard!

Click here to go check it out and/or join in!

Space Marine Sternguard

At long last, I finally got my Sternguard assembled!  Just in time for a classic Crimson Fists versus Orks battle today!  I've had these Scibor Miniatures Spartan heads for over a year.  (Maybe two?)  And I figured about that long ago what I wanted to do for a heavy flamer model too.  Now it'll only be another 30 years or so until I get them painted up! 

The sternguard sergeant didn't turn out quite as nice as I'd hoped.  I used a Blood Angel Sanguinary Guard torso for him and a gladius-hilted power sword.  I'm not a huge fan of the big ammo hopper on the boltergun but wanted it to stand out as more than a standard issue weapon. (Might eventually cut that off.)  Overall, I do like the style but he looks too bulky.  Not as agile and sleek as I'd like.  I'll add the power pack on his back once I've painted the helmet crest.

For my heavy flamer specialist, I used the battle crazy head and gave him two-fisted flaming fury.  His right hand has a bit of a gangster kink in the wrist, making sure he spreads his fire around as wide and cocky as possible.  None of these pictures give us a good look, so I took a few shots.  He, too, isn't quite as impressive as I'd imagined, but maybe after I get some paint on them they'll smooth out.  

 

I've always wanted a way to make the Sternguard Vets stand out and now I have it.  Can't wait to see how many orks they down with their poison-tipped, flaming explosive ammo!